


forever in my mind and memory

by ArgentLives



Series: Across Every Universe (You are Home) [11]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentLives/pseuds/ArgentLives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries to recall what he’d been doing last, before he’d been sleeping, but the only images his mind manages to call up are that of a face that’s already becoming blurry, already fading, but that he’d known so well in his sleep.</p><p>The girl in his dream, the one he’d seemed to know from some other lifetime, the reason he had been so reluctant to be forced back awake. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to burn the image of her smile to the back of his mind. He doesn’t want to forget her—whoever she was, whoever she'd been, she’d seemed important.</p><p> </p><p>[After the Reverse Flash alters the timeline, Barry wakes up from his coma a little differently. This time, it's in a world where he's never met an Iris West before, although that doesn't mean he's forgotten her]</p>
            </blockquote>





	forever in my mind and memory

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt: "Reverse Flash goes back in time and creates an alternative timeline where Iris and Barry never meet until after Barry becomes the Flash"
> 
> This is suuuuuch an oldie omg like one of the first Westallen fics I ever wrote; I almost forgot it existed (but I'm trying to upload all of my answered prompts on here, with the longer ones first so bear with me please)

When he wakes up, it’s all of a sudden, and in a cold sweat. His eyes snap open, and when he tries to sit up he finds there are wires tugging at his skin, tethering him to something. His heart is hammering in his chest, so unusually fast he’s afraid he might be dying—a notion not so improbable considering those wires are connected to a machine that’s steadily beeping away, and that machine upon closer inspection turns out to be heart monitor, and according to what he can see on the screen, he appears to be flat-lining.

But that can’t be, because other than the initial shock of waking so abruptly from a dream that felt so real, he feels fine. More than fine, actually—he feels more awake than ever, like he’s bursting full of energy, like there’s electricity crackling just beneath his fingertips.

He takes in his surroundings and dully registers that he’s not at home. He’s in some sort of lab, and it seems oddly familiar, but his mind is still foggy and his thoughts are all muddled and he can’t quite put a finger on it.

He tries to recall what he’d been doing last, before he’d been sleeping, but the only images his mind manages to call up are that of a face that’s already becoming blurry, already fading, but that he’d known so well in his sleep.

The girl in his dream, the one he’d seemed to know from some other lifetime, the reason he had been so reluctant to be forced back awake. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to burn the image of her smile to the back of his mind. He doesn’t want to forget her—whoever she was, whoever she'd been, she’d seemed important.

"Oh my God, Barry! Cisco, come quick! Barry’s awake!" 

He barely has time to open his eyes again before he’s being pulled into a hug, so tight he can barely breathe, but the arms around him are familiar, and so is that voice. So is that name.

"Geez, Caitlin. Let him breathe—you’re gonna suffocate him like that."

This voice is familiar too—teasing but with barely contained delight—and his mind is finally starting to catch up again, the ghost of memories of this place, of these people, skirting around his thoughts.

When the person hugging him pulls away, and he catches sight of the two people hovering over him, beaming at him with tears stuck in their eyes, it all comes rushing back.

"Caitlin? Cisco? What happened?" he looks back and forth between them in confusion, taking in the sheer relief in their eyes. He almost asks  _'Where am I?'_ , but that would be stupid—he knows where he is. He’s in S.T.A.R. Labs. He works here, and these are his colleagues. His friends.

He briefly wonders why he couldn’t remember this in the first place, and why a nagging voice in his mind keeps insisting that he’s CSI. That’s ridiculous. He’s a researcher, not a Crime Scene Investigator. He’s known that this was what he wanted to do with his life since he was eleven.

Caitlin and Cisco exchange a worried look, and Caitlin bites her lip in concern.

"You don’t…you don’t remember?"

"Remember what?" he balks, completely lost. Whatever it is that he’s forgetting, he knows it can’t be good if even  _Cisco_  looks this upset remembering it. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Cisco frown.

"You were struck by lightning, dude. The particle accelerator…there was an explosion, remember? The night we turned it on. Everything went to shit. You were trying to evacuate people in the area, trying to warn who you could when it happened. When you were hit. And you’ve been in a coma ever since," Cisco finishes miserably.

His memories of the night are messy and disjointed, but he does vaguely recall what Cisco is telling him. It’s more the feelings he remembers than anything—the panic, the despair, the fear. Most of all, the disappointment.

He nods, rubbing a shaky hand down his face, taking it all in. And then he freezes.

“ _Coma?_  For how long?” he asks, voice wobbly.

"Nine months," Caitlin chimes in, and for the first time he notices how tired she looks, how guarded her eyes are. He hasn’t seen her this tense in a long time. "We were really starting to think you would never wake up."

He manages a small smile for both of them, even though he’s trying really hard not to freak out.

"Well, I did. You don’t have to worry about me anymore."

Cisco squeezes his shoulder and gives him a watery smile before opening his mouth, about to say something else. Barry cuts him off when another thought suddenly occurs to him.

"Where’s Ronnie?"

He instantly regrets it, the second the words leave his mouth, because judging by the way Cisco’s shoulders sag, the way Caitlin’s hand flies to her mouth, and the pain that registers in her expression, he knows he’s not in for good news. He knows what they’re going to say before they say it, and he steels himself in anticipation. It still doesn’t soften the blow.

"Ronnie…didn’t make it. He was in the pipeline, trying to shut the accelerator down, and he didn’t make it out. He’s dead," Cisco chokes out, plowing through the words he knows Caitlin still can’t bear to say out loud, throwing a concerned glance her way as he does.

Barry feels his throat closing, feels his heart constrict as his brain struggles to process what he’s been told. Like Cisco and Caitlin, Ronnie hadn’t just been his colleague—he’d been his friend, too. He was a good man, someone Barry had really respected, and genuinely liked. The four of them had been close, working on the particle accelerator together.

"I’m so sorry," he whispers after a few moments, when he can finally find his voice again, looking towards Caitlin when he says it. Ronnie was her fiancé, the man she loved more than anyone in the world, and he can’t even begin to fathom what it must have been like for her, losing him.

Caitlin turns her face away, a tear stealing its way down her cheek.

"It’s okay," she says, even though he knows it’s not. 

Before he can say anything else, she wipes underneath her eyes and moves towards the door. 

"I’m going to let Dr. Wells know you’re awake. It’s really good to have you back, Barry." And just like that, she’s gone.

He and Cisco sit in silence for a while, at a loss for words, when the nagging feeling he’s had since he woke up peaks.

"Hey, Cisco," he asks quietly, when he can’t shake the feeling any longer, "was there a girl who came to visit me while I was…while I was out? Really, um, really pretty, and around our age?"

Cisco raises an eyebrow in question, and seems to regain some of his usual buoyancy when he smirks at him, even if it does seem forced.

"Not that I know of, no. The only woman who came to visit you was your mother," he snickers. "What, do you have some secret girlfriend you never told me about?"

Barry glares at him, a blush creeping its way up his neck, wondering what else he had possibly expected. He still can’t help the slight feeling of disappointment that floods through him, though—she had seemed so real.

He shakes his head. “No, no. Nothing like that,” he sighs, and then out of nowhere, worry pierces his heart. “Is my mom okay? Did anything happen to her?”

He doesn’t miss the concern in Cisco’s eyes, and he’s surprised at himself—he has no idea where these thoughts are even coming from. But he’s got this image of his mother falling to the ground, cold and lifeless and eyes unseeing, that just won’t go away.

"Yeah, of course. She and your dad will be thrilled to hear you’re up; they’ve been worried sick. Dude, what’s with all these questions? Why would you think something happened to your mom?"

Barry shakes his head, puzzled. “I don’t know. It’s like I have these memories that aren’t really memories, things that I think I must have dreamed about in those nine months—only, they don’t feel like dreams. They felt real. And I don’t remember much, but I keep getting these random images, you know? Flashes of stuff that happened…or that seemed to happen…when I was out.”

Cisco regards him curiously, and Barry knows that he’s thinking they should take some tests, see what’s going on inside his mind. It’s just…for once, Barry doesn’t think that science will have an answer for this.

It’s then that Caitlin and Dr. Wells come into the room, and insist that they really do need to take some tests—only not the kind that would help him figure out his not-quite-dreams, but tests to examine the remarkable changes his body seems to have undergone, and to figure out what’s going on inside his body.

He only manages to stop worrying about the dreams that seem like memories, to drive any thought of them out of his mind, when they discover that he has fucking superpowers. 

 

* * *

 

Barry loves saving people. He loves helping people, and he loves using his speed for good. At first, he’d been driven to do this by a sense of responsibility, and an even bigger sense of guilt. He’d been determined to save the city from the dangerous metahumans the particle accelerator explosion had created, and help those affected who were not hell-bent on destruction.

Together, he, Cisco, Caitlin, and Wells had been working to clean up the mess that they’d created. All of the people they’d harmed, the consequences they’d caused. He had been desperate to make up for it—still is.

But it’s more than that now. Now he doesn’t limit himself to only dealing with other metahumans—now he makes it his goal to protect people from whatever he can, whether he’s responsible or not. And it feels really, really good.

Which is why when he gets the call from Cisco that there’s a hostage situation at some huge benefit event commemorating some of Central City’s best, he’s there in a heartbeat.

He’s gotten good at this, and it doesn’t take long to get everyone to safety and stand off against the guy who appears to be the source of all the trouble. Of course, he doesn’t realize that the guy has the place rigged with explosives until it’s almost too late.

He’s about to make a run for it—he’s already evacuated everyone from the premise, anyway—when a movement in the periphery of his vision, the swish of a jacket peeking out from behind a desk, catches his eye. 

He doesn’t even stop to think, doesn’t have time, before he scoops up whoever it is and bolts, fire and flames nipping at his heels as the building goes up in smoke. 

When he’s sure he’s out of range of the blast, he puts the person down, and for the first time really looks at them. It’s a woman—she’s beautiful, and the sight of her jogs something in his memory. He’s sure he’s never met her before but…somehow she still looks familiar.

He should leave, now that he knows she’s safe, he really shouldn’t stick around, but something is keeping him there, rooted to the spot.

"Excuse me, miss, why were you hiding in there? Do you realize how dangerous that was?" he asks, voice firm, mostly because whatever something is keeping him here is also prompting him to start a conversation.

Barry is briefly taken aback by the flash of anger in her eyes, and notices for the first time that she looks annoyed.

"Well, I’m a reporter, and I  _was_  getting a really good scoop. Until I dropped my recorder when you grabbed me and ran,” she says accusingly, and adds, “I’m also one of Central City’s best—I was _invited_  to be there. I didn’t just show up.”

“Would you rather have been left in that building when it blew up?” Barry splutters incredulously.

She glares at him stubbornly, refusing to budge. He frowns, and the real reason behind her frustration dawns on him.

“And I wasn’t insinuating that you weren’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t—I mean, I’m sorry.” 

Her eyes soften and she gives him a radiant smile, one that feels achingly familiar.

"Okay, okay. You got me. I guess dying for my job wouldn’t have been such a great option, after all. But at least now no one can say I’m not dedicated to what I do. Thanks, though," she grins sheepishly, extending a hand towards him.

He accepts her outstretched hand, and marvels at how perfectly it fits in his. How familiar her touch feels. How everything about her is familiar, familiar, familiar.

He sees something change in her expression, sees the spark of curiosity in her eyes, and he knows that she feels it too.

"Have we met before?" she asks, narrowing her eyes at him and tilting her head in thought.

"Umm," is all he can think to say.

"Right, sorry, stupid question. I don’t think I’d forget if I’d met a guy wearing a head-to-toe red leather suit before. With super speed."

"Yeah, I guess you’re right," he laughs, unsure of himself, because it’s not actually a stupid question at all. He feels like he knows her from somewhere, too, although she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who he could have possibly forgotten.

She’s still looking at him curiously, trying to see under his mask.

"Well, I’m Iris, anyway. Iris West," she says confidently, squaring her shoulders. As a reporter, she must do this a lot, always having to introduce herself to her interviewees, and Barry gets the impression that the formality has become something of a habit.

The name sticks in his mind, and something compels him to say it out loud. It feels natural and right and fitting, rolling easily off of his tongue. And as he takes in her smile again, so warm and bright, something suddenly clicks.

"You’re the girl from my dream!" he bursts out, unable to contain his excitement. He  _has_  seen her before, and of course he recognizes her—she was with him every day for those nine months, even if it wasn’t physically.

It doesn’t register that he must sound incredibly foolish, that she couldn’t possibly know what he’s talking about, until a few seconds of tense silence pass by between them. He looks at her, blushing, and expects to see confusion, annoyance, judgment, maybe even anger there.

He doesn’t expect the familiarity, the shock, and the warmth that registers in her eyes.

"You were in mine, too," she says slowly, in awe, "I remember you. We’ve never met, but I remember you."

She takes a tentative step closer to him, and moves to push back the hood of his suit. He should push her away, he should protect his identity, he really shouldn’t let her see his face. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t.

She looks at him without his mask, observing his face, studying every feature. He watches, mesmerized, as a crease appears on her forehead, as her eyes meet his and she breathes out one word, one that’s impossible for her to know, one that somehow she does anyway.

_"Barry."_

 

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on my [tumblr](http://bisexualiriswest.tumblr.com/), as most of these prompt fills are.


End file.
